Loading ...To test out the usability of its new SDK, Apple invited a couple of games studios to try their hand with the platform for a couple of weeks. EA’s Travis Boatman showed up at the Roadmap event to demonstrate their iPhone version of Spore, where the accelerometer moves the spore around, while Apple themselves created a Wing Commander-style game called Touch Fighter. Tilting the iPhone steers while tapping the screen fires.
Sega also demonstrated a game called Super Monkey Ball, describing the SDK as “flexible and powerful”; as our own Vincent described it, think Wiimote on the iPhone. According to the Sega rep, the game isn’t a cut-down cellphone game but full, console standard.
AOL have also been using the SDK, though in their case they’ve created the first official AIM client for the iPhone. Apparently the coder behind it had never worked on OS X before, yet the app only took five days to produce. User icons are present, as are multi-person chats; swiping the screen side to side swaps between chat windows.
To illustrate how the iPhone could be implemented in more niche settings, a medical app called ePOCRATES was demo’d; drug lookups, compatibility with an existing SQL server and the ability to check for drug interactions with existing medication have all been implemented in less than two weeks of coding.
